494 



ON THE TOPOGRAPHY OF ATHENS. 



high idea of its magnificence. We have little difficulty therefore in 

 appropriating to the Olympium those gigantic columns of the 

 Corinthian order, which attract the notice of travellers on the south- 

 eastern side of the Acropolis.* But as this opinion is contested, I 

 shall briefly recapitulate the arguments upon which it is founded. 



In the first place, the Peribolus of this temple agrees very nearly with 

 the dimensions which are assigned by Pausanias, to the Peribolus of 

 the Olympium. 



Secondly, it is of the Corinthian order ; which Vitruvius states the 

 Olympium to have been, and as it was an hypsethral temple, with 

 ten columns in each front, and a double row on each flank, it is 

 very probably the same to which that author alludes in a very obscure, 

 if not corrupt passage of his third book, f 



Thirdly, the number and magnitude of the columns which must 

 have belonged to this temple when entire, fully correspond with the 

 notion that Vitruvius gives of its magnificence, and it would be 



* These columns (of which 124 once surrounded the cell) are six feet in diameter and 

 nearly sixty feet high. Vitruvius speaks of this temple in the following terms : — " Id autem 

 opus non modo vulgo, sed etiam in paucis a magnificentia nominatur." And afterwards 

 he proceeds, — " In Asty vero Olympium amplo modulorum comparatu, Corinthiis syme- 

 triis et proportionibus (uti supra scriptum est) architectandum Cossutius suscepisse 

 memoratur." It is spoken of in the same terms of admiration by Livy : — " Magnificentiae 

 vero in deos vel Jovis Olympii templum Athenis, unum in terris inchoatum pro magnitu- 

 dine dei, potest testis esse." 



f Vitruvius in his third book, where he speaks of hypsethral temples, observes, that 

 they had ten columns in each front, and a double row of columns in each flank, with other 

 particulars, concluding what he had to say upon the subject of hypsethral temples, with 

 the following remark : — " Hujus autem exemplar Romae non est, sed Athenis octastylos, 

 et in templo Olympic" Ed. Schneider!. Here the allusion to an octastyle temple seems 

 to be perfectly inconsistent with what precedes it, and therefore cannot have been originally 

 intended by Vitruvius. It is evident that he alludes to some example of what he had been 

 speaking of, and as he makes use of the expression Olympio, it is probable that he means 

 the Olympium at Athens. But the difficulty lies in the word octastylos, and the MSS. 

 afford us no ground for supposing it to be a corruption. We must therefore condemn it 

 upon other grounds of criticism, and as the word contains the elements of its own cor- 

 rection, adopt Mr. Wilkins's ingenious conjecture by substituting in asty, which at once 

 gives it sense and consistency. 



