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The Parthenon, the most beautiful specimen of the Doric, has never been equalled, and it still stands august in its ruins, the glory of the old Acropolis and the pride of Athens. It was built of white Pentelic marble, and rested on a basement of limestone.
Above this lay a layer of soil about 1 foot 9 inches in depth, and then, on the top of a great layer of débris, by which the site had been levelled and extended, came the walls of the Second City. This, with its projecting towers, had evidently once formed the enclosure of an Acropolis; and within the wall lay the remains of a large building which appeared to have been a house or palace.
Then since no one opposed them, they got inside the fortifications and opened the gates at their leisure, and received into the city the whole army and Chosroes himself. By this time the king was furious with anger and he fired nearly the whole city. He then mounted the acropolis and decided to storm the fortress.
When Pisistratus cried out that his life was no longer safe, all the democrats exclaimed that they would protect him; and, as they had the right of voting, they then and there said that he should have a bodyguard of fifty armed men to protect him. When his plans were all ready, he took possession of the Acropolis by force.
And, indeed, one of the Attic writers, perceiving it to be very hard to make an excuse for this, feigns that Aegeus, at the approach of the ship, running hastily to the Acropolis to see what news, slipped and fell down, as if he had no servants, or none would attend him on his way to the shore. And, indeed, the faults committed in the rapes of women admit of no plausible excuse in Theseus.
We know, and have always known, who built the Parthenon and crowned the Acropolis; but not until Schliemann had by faith and good works removed the mountain of Hissarlik, did we know that the Troy, of which blind Homer sang, was not a figment of the poet's brain. Schliemann showed us that a thousand years before the age of Pericles there was a civilization almost as great.
The Capitol was in reality as well as in name the Acropolis of Rome, an independent castle capable of being defended even after the city had fallen: its gate lay probably towards what was afterwards the Forum. The Aventine seems to have been fortified in a similar style, although less strongly, and to have been preserved free from permanent occupation.
Being now in possession of abundance of provisions and money, he did not leave the place, and go back to the citadel on the promontory, but fortified the circuit of Achradina and held it conjointly with the Acropolis, with which he connected its fortifications. A horseman from Syracuse brought the news of the capture of Achradina to Mago and Hiketes when they were close to Katana.
Seeing no road, we took a tall hill to the left of the distant Acropolis for a mark, and steered straight for it over all obstructions, and over a little rougher piece of country than exists any where else outside of the State of Nevada, perhaps. Part of the way it was covered with small, loose stones we trod on six at a time, and they all rolled.
The dual and four-fold development of the city, as above sketched, is by no means far advanced in most of our present towns or cities, which have obviously but scanty expression of the ideas shadowed forth for the modern equivalents of cloister and cathedral, of academe and acropolis.
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