File:Rambles and studies in Greece (1878) (14596102600).jpg

Identifier: ramblesstudiesi00maha (find matches)
Title: Rambles and studies in Greece
Year: 1878 (1870s)
Authors: Mahaffy, John Pentland, Sir, 1839-1919
Subjects: Art, Greek
Publisher: London Macmillan
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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the Erechtheum,which, standing beside the great massive Parthen-on on the Acropolis of Athens, presents the verycontrast upon which I am insisting. It is smalland essentially graceful, being built in the Ionicstyle, with rich ornamentation ; while the Parthen-on is massive, and, in spite of much ornamenta-tion, very severe in its plainer Doric style. But to return to the pillars of Hadrians Temple.They are about fifty-five feet high, by six and a-half 1 This beautiful monument has been so defaced and mutilated thatthe photographs of to-day give no idea of its decoration. The carefuldrawings and restorations of Stuart and Rcvctt were made in the lastcentury, -when it was still comparatively intact, and it is through theirbooh alone that we can now estimate the merits of many of the ancientbnfldingi of Athens. It should be added, that there was a solitaryCorinthian capital found in the temple of Basse, whirl) I will describein another chapter. Hut this still affords an unsolved problem.
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il) A THENS AND A TTICA. 33 feet in diameter, and no Corinthian pillar of thiscolossal size would ever have been set up by theGreeks in their better days. So, then, in spite ofthe grandeur of these isolated remains—a grandeurnot destroyed, perhaps even not diminished, bycoffee tables, and inquiring waiters, and miHtarybands, and a vulgar crowd about their base — tothe student of really Greek art they are not of thehighest interest; nay, they even suggest to himwhat the Periclean Greeks would have done hadthey, with such resources, completed the greattemple due to the munificence of the RomanEmperor. Let us turn then, in preference, to the Templeof Theseus, at the opposite extremity of the town,it too standing upon a clear platform, and strik-ing the traveller with its symmetry and its com-pleteness, as he approaches from the Peiraeus. Itis in every way a contrast to the temple of whichwe have just spoken. It is very small—in fact sosmall in comparison with the Parthenon, or theg

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