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Updated: May 28, 2025
The wonders of the outer world, the Tagus, with the mighty fleets of England riding on its bosom, the towers of Cintra overhanging the shaggy forest of cork-trees and willows, the glaring marble of Pentelicus, the banks of the Rhine, the glaciers of Clarens, the sweet Lake of Leman, the dell of Egeria with its summer-birds and rustling lizards, the shapeless ruins of Rome overgrown with ivy and wall-flowers, the, stars, the sea, the mountains, all were mere accessories, the background to one dark and melancholy figure.
The quarries which yielded inexhaustible materials for the public buildings and statues of Greece, and for the great monuments of Rome, were situated on the slopes of Mount Pentelicus, near Athens; and after having been closed for ages, have recently been reopened for the restoration of some of the buildings in the Greek capital.
A confined triangle, perhaps fifty miles its greatest length, and thirty its greatest breadth; two elevated rocky barriers meeting at an angle; three prominent mountains commanding the plain, Parnes, Pentelicus, and Hymettus; an unsatisfactory soil; some streams, not always full; such is about the report which the agent of a London company would have made of Attica.
'Judith! Judith! where lingerest thou? Marble of Pentelicus! foam-flake of the wine dark main! lily of the Mareotic lake! You accursed black Andromeda, if you don't bring the breakfast this moment, I'll cut you in two!
Athens was seething with thought and feeling: Pericles was giving his annual oration worth thousands of weekly sermons and planning his dream in marble; Phidias was cutting away the needless portions of the white stone of Pentelicus and liberating wondrous forms of beauty; Sophocles was revealing the possibilities of the stage; Æschylus was pointing out the way as a playwright; and the passion for physical beauty was everywhere an adjunct of religion.
Therefore we proceed at once to guide the visitor on his journey. But it is necessary that he should know something of the building, of which these fragments formed parts: "The Parthenon," says Colonel Leake, "was constructed entirely of white marble, from Mount Pentelicus. It consisted of a cell, surrounded with a peristyle, which had eight Doric columns in the fronts, and seventeen in the sides.
Let him turn to the right: below him nestles the gnarled hill of Areopagus, home of the Furies, the buzzing plaza of the Agora, the closely clustered city. Behind, there spread mountain, valley, plain,—here green, here brown, here golden,—with Pentelicus the Mighty rearing behind all, his summits fretted white, not with winter snows, but with lustrous marble.
The southernmost point of Attica was Sunium, sacred to Minerva; Marathon, the scene of the most brilliant victory which the Athenians ever fought, was in the eastern part of Attica. To the southeast of Athens was Mount Hymettus, celebrated for its flowers and honey. Between Hymettus and Marathon was Mount Pentelicus, famed for its marbles.
You have quarries of marble richer than Pentelicus, more varied than Paros, but do not build a great white square house of marble and think that it is beautiful, or that you are using marble nobly.
I have seen the goats on Mount Pentelicus scatter at the approach of a stranger, climb to the sharp points of projecting rocks, and attitudinize in the most self-conscious manner, striking at once those picturesque postures against the sky with which Oriental pictures have made us and them familiar. But the whole proceeding was theatrical.
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