HEPwEDITARY DESCENT IX ANCIEXT GREECE. 11 



thenes. Yonder on the slope of the brown pasture 

 is the semicircular enclosure called the Pnyx, where 

 the audiences of Demosthenes and Pericles were 

 accustomed to assemble in the open air to listen to 

 the yet unequalled orations, which, next to the dia- 

 logues of Plato and the loftiest Greek dramas, were 

 the best product of Athens in her supreme hour. 

 Among the groves of the Cephissus within sight are 

 the gardens up and down which Plato walked many 

 a year, and in which all of us, according to our cul- 

 ture, have in thought more or less often paced to 

 and fro. There was the Academy. This is a modern 

 word. On the other little Athenian stream, the Ilis- 

 sus, stood Aristotle's Lyceum. That term is singu- 

 larly familiar in the latest civilization. At one corner 

 of the Acropolis we have a slope running down to- 

 ward the south-east sun ; and in it is scooped a 

 semicircle, partly in the earth, partly in the rock, 

 uncovered in 1862 by Hofbaurath Strack's German 

 shovels. Here is the spot where the auditors of 

 jEschylus and Sophocles sat when they listened to 

 the sublime dramas which were the true pulpit of 

 ancient Greece. Some of the chairs there have on 

 them carving so perfect that you find a lion's claw 

 still savagely sharp, although sculptured when the 

 Scots and Picts yet harassed the barbaric British 

 isle. We look next on the spot where Socrates is 

 said to have drunk the poison, and to have gazed 

 toward the sunset when he told his weeping disciples 

 that they might bury him after his death if they 

 could catch him. Here is a scarped ridge of reddish- 



