We have perhaps too long lingered among the dusky recesses of this ancient fane, spell-bound by the charms of a beautiful mythology. We emerge now into the light of history, and approach that matchless structure erected by Ictinos where the Athenian people offered up their daily prayers to heaven.[265] The Parthenon occupies the most elevated platform of the Acropolis, the pavement of its peristyle being on a level with the capitals of the columns of the Propylæa. It was constructed entirely of white Pentelic marble,[266] and consisted of a cella surrounded by a Doric peristyle having eight columns on either front, and seventeen on the sides. These pillars, thirty-four feet in height, sprang from a pavement elevated three steps above the rocky platform, from whence the total height of the building was about sixty-five feet. The arrangement of the interior like that of the great temples of Egypt had reference rather to utility and the convenience of public worship, than to the effect which long ranges of lofty pillars, extending through unencumbered space, would have produced upon the mind: for the cella, sixty-two feet in breadth, was divided into two chambers of unequal size,—the western about forty-four feet in length, the eastern nearly one hundred. In both these chambers the ceiling was supported by columns. Footnote 265: It is worthy of remark that from this temple all persons of Doric race were excluded. King Cleomenes, therefore, when desirous of obtaining admission, denied his birth-right, and called himself an Achæan.—Herod. v. 72. Footnote 266: The quarries of this mountain, worked to so great an extent by the ancients, are now filling again with marble which grows rapidly.—Chandler, ii. 191. Cf. Magius, Var. Lect. t. iv. 182. b. Gemme Fisica Sotterranea, l. 1. c. ix. § 6. p. 87.—For the manner in which it is thought to vegetate, see Tournefort, i. pp. 225. 228. sqq.