Vacation days in GreeceRichardson, Rufus B. (Rufus Byam)
History
Vacation days in Greece
Richardson, Rufus B. (Rufus Byam)
Greece -- Description and travel
The inside of this temple must have been as peculiar as the outside.
The great question here is where to place the gigantic figures called
Atlantes or Telamones, male figures corresponding to the female figures
on the Erechtheum, but, unlike them, showing exertion, like Atlas in
the Olympia metope. Probably they stood on the lateral walls of the
cella, and, with their twenty-five feet, they would reach up to the
roof, like the second row of columns at Pæstum. The cella probably ran
clear through from one end of the temple to the other, and, while the
two divisions of the temple to the right and left of it, which were
as much closed as the cella itself, had entrances from the east, the
cella was probably entered from the west. One has to say "probably"
very often in speaking of the interior, because the temple has been
nearly all carried away to make the pier at Porto Empedocle, the harbor
of the modern city. As late as 1401 three columns were still standing
and carrying a piece of the architrave. But the temple entered very
early on the stage of dilapidation, for the reason that the roof was
never put upon it. For more than half a century, even from the time of
Theron, Akragas had wrought upon this monster building, and had not
finished it when the Carthaginian fury broke upon her. Although the
city rose again, and even prospered, it never saw a day for taking up
again such a gigantic enterprise.
Besides this temple of Olympian Zeus there was an older temple of
Zeus Polieus on the acropolis, to which an unusual interest attaches,
because it was built by Phalaris, of execrable memory, who, having
attached to himself a band of laborers for the construction of the
temple, by their help seized the sovereign power and subverted the
democracy. Down in the crypt of the Church of Santa Maria dei Greci
we were shown a regular stylobate of three steps, and on the top step
eight columns, the upper parts of which run up into the church, which
shows also columns of the other long side of the temple. Tradition
claims this as the identical temple built by Phalaris. But as the forms
of the columns forbid putting them back into the sixth century we do
better to identify them with the temple of Athena on the acropolis. The
temple built by Phalaris is to be sought, then, on the ground occupied
by the modern cathedral. Jove gave place to Jesus, and the virgin
goddess, as at Athens, to the Virgin Mother.
When we told our smiling host that we intended to ride in one day
from his hotel to Castelvetrano, the point of departure for Selinus,
he said the thing was impossible. We told him that, while we admitted
his judgment in all that pertained to horses, we were going to make
the sixty-two miles which, according to Baedeker, lay between us and
our goal between sunrise and sunset, however bad the road might be. He
then, like a true sportsman, got interested, offered to bet, and when
we declined begged us to telegraph back to him if we really did it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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