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The age of Pericles was the period of the highest national development. At that time were reared the celebrated structures in honor of the virgin-goddess who was the patron of Athens the Parthenon, the Propylaea, the Erechtheum which crowned the Acropolis, and were the glory of the city as they were the masterpieces of Grecian architecture.
And when it came to the execution of ornamental details, these were wrought with a free hand and, in the best period, with fine artistic feeling. The wall-band of the Erechtheum is one of the most exquisite things which Greece has left us. Simplicity in general form, harmony of proportion, refinement of line these are the great features of Greek columnar architecture.
Melas and the children pushed their way with the others, but the crowd was so great and the movement so slow that when at last they got near the sacred altars before the Erechtheum, the ceremonies were over and the air was already filled with smoke and the smell of roasting meat.
It is certain that among the workers on the Erechtheum was Praxias, a pupil of Calamis, and probably a relative of Praxiteles. The distinction between artist and mason, so marked in our day, scarcely existed in Greece. The mason who had talent became a noted sculptor; and the sculptor, instead of making a model in wax or plaster, set to work, like Michelangelo, on the block of marble himself.
Therefore, a lamp was always kept burning in the Erechtheum; and the torch-race belongs chiefly to her festival, of which the meaning is to show the danger of the perishing of the light even by excess of the air that nourishes it; and so that the race is not to the swift, but to the wise.
The Erechtheum was the only Ionic temple of first-rate importance in Greece, and the employment of the Ionic order in Greece was confined to interiors and minor buildings. As for the Corinthian order, the favourite order of the Romans, it was scarcely recognized by the Greeks. In all their great temples, in Greece, in Sicily, and Magna Graecia, they used the Doric order.
"I'd rather see the man swallowing swords any day," answered Dion. "Let's go and see if we can't find him again," and off they went toward a crowd of people gathered about a little booth beyond the Erechtheum. It was not until they had seen him swallow swords twice and eat fire once, and the conjurer had begun to pack his things to go away that the Twins thought at all about time.
Examine the volute: this is the nearest approach to a mathematical result that can be found in Grecian architecture; yet this very approximation is one of the greatest triumphs of Art. No geometrical rule has been discovered which can exactly produce the spirals of the Erechtheum, nor can they be found in shells.
Between the Propylaea and the Erechtheum was placed the colossal bronze statue of Pallas-Promachos, the work of Phidias, which towered so high above the other buildings, that the plume of her helmet and the point of her spear were visible on the sea between Sunium and Athens.
Near the Erechtheum we passed the foundation on which had stood a colossal bronze figure of Athena, sixty feet in height, holding in her hand a spear tipped with gold, the point of which could be seen by the ancient mariners far out at sea.
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