Such is an outline of the chief buildings of the Acropolis, which, in its best days, had four distinct characters: being at once the fortress, the sacred inclosure, the treasury, and the museum of art, of the Athenian nation. It was an entire offering to the deity, unrivalled in richness and splendor; it was the peerless gem of Greece, the glory and the pride of genius, the wonder and envy of the world. Beneath the southern wall of the Acropolis, near its extremity, was situated the Athenian or Dionysiac theatre. Its seats, rising one above another, were cut of the sloping rock. Of these, only the two highest rows are now visible, the rest being concealed by an accumulation of soil, the removal of which would probably bring to light the whole shell of the theatre. Plato affirms it was capable of containing thirty thousand persons. It contained statues of all the great tragic and comic poets, the most conspicuous of which were naturally those of AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, among the former, and those of Aristophanes and Menander among the latter. On the southwest side of the Acropolis is the site of the Odeum, or musical theatre of Herodes Atticus, named by him the theatre of Regilla, in honor of his wife. On the northeast side of the Acropolis stood the Prytaneum, where citizens who had rendered services to the state were maintained at the public expense. Extending southwards from the site of the Prytaneum, ran the street to which Pausanias gave the name of Tripods, from its containing a number of small temples or edifices crowned with tripods, to commemorate the triumphs gained by the Choragi in the theatre of Bacchus. Opposite to the west end of the Acropolis is the Areopagus, or hill of Mars, on the eastern extremity of which was situated the celebrated court of the Areopagus. This point is reached by means of sixteen stone steps cut in the rock, immediately above which is a bench of stone, forming three sides of a quadrangle, like a triclinium, generally supposed to have been the tribunal. The ruins of a small chapel consecrated to St. Dionysius the Areopagite, and commemorating his conversion by St. Paul, are here visible. About a quarter of a mile southwest from the centre of the Areopagus stands Pnyx, the place provided for the public assemblies at Athens in its palmy days. The steps by which the speaker mounted the rostrum, and a tier of three seats hewn in the solid rock for the audience, are still visible. This is perhaps the most interesting spot in Athens to the lovers of Grecian genius, being associated with the renown of Demosthenes, and the other famed Athenian orators, "whose resistless eloquence Wielded at will that fierce democratie, Shook the arsenal and fulmined over Greece, To Macedon, and Artaxerxes' throne." [Illustration: THE ARCH OF HADRIAN.]