Triumphs and Wonders of the 19th Century: The True Mirror of a Phenomenal Era: A volume of original, entertaining and instructive historic and descriptive writings, showing the many and marvellous achievements which distinguish an hundred years of material, intellectual, social and moral progressBoyd, James P. (James Penny)
History
Triumphs and Wonders of the 19th Century: The True Mirror of a Phenomenal Era: A volume of original, entertaining and instructive historic and descriptive writings, showing the many and marvellous achievements which distinguish an hundred years of material, intellectual, social and moral progress
Boyd, James P. (James Penny)
Inventions; Progress
and various temples to Athena, worshiped under the different guises
that she assumed, have been discovered. The place where the great
bronze statue of Athena, one of the master works of Phidias, stood,
has been fixed, and through the inscriptions found on the Acropolis,
numerous problems of Greek history have been solved. Every one knows
the story of the Elgin marbles that once formed the decoration of the
friezes of the Parthenon, and which in the early part of this century
were brought to London by Lord Elgin. That act, though frequently
denounced as a piece of vandalism, has probably done more to arouse
an interest in Greek archæology throughout Europe than anything else.
Even the indignation which Lord Elgin’s act provoked has served a
good purpose, not only in leading Greece to take better care of her
great treasures, but in inducing scholars of England, France, Germany,
and the United States to establish, in Athens, architectural schools
where young archæologists may be trained, and where expeditions can be
organized for the systematic investigation of the numerous cities of
ancient Greece and the surrounding islands. The most important work
done through these schools is the excavation of Olympia by the Germans,
and of Delos and of Delphi by the French, while only some degrees
less noticeable is the work done by a zealous Greek, M. Carpanos, at
Dodona, by the Greek Society at Eleusis, Epidaurus, and Tanagra, and by
the American School at Eretria and at Argos. At Olympia the discovery
of the great Temple to Zeus, the grand theatre in which the famous
games took place, the numerous shrines erected in honor of various
deities that belong to the court of Zeus, and of hundreds of votive
inscriptions commemorating the victors in the games, have enabled
scholars to restore for us the ancient glories of the place, and to
trace the history of the sacred city through its period of glory to
its decline and fall. The master work of antiquity, the golden statue
of Zeus made by Phidias, is, alas! forever lost, but it was at Olympia
that the Germans found the wonderful statue of Hermes by Praxiteles,
a find that in itself was worth the million marks spent by the German
government as a tribute to ancient Greece. At Delos and Delphi, the
careful work done by the French has added to our material for tracing
the course of Greek religion. Next to Olympia there is, perhaps, no
place in ancient Greece which had such a strange hold upon the people
as the seat of the great oracle at the foot of Mount Parnassus. The
work at Delphi is still progressing, but enough has been found to
justify the great reputation of this religious centre in ancient times.
We can now traverse once again the sacred way leading past numerous
buildings to the great shrine of Apollo, and to the cave from which the
Pythian priestess obtained her inspiration. Fewer works of art have
been discovered here than in Olympia, though perhaps the soil still
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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