ON THE TOPOGRAPHY OF ATHENS. 



505 



by Pausanias under this name then stood* ; and to this early ex- 

 tension of the city round the Acropolis, we may refer the rest of the 

 ancient buildings, which he describes at the base of the hill or near it. 

 No other public buildings, however, appear to have been erected on 

 this side until after the Persian invasion, when the Theseum was 

 built, for which in all probability no space that was sufficiently large, 

 could be found unoccupied in the more ancient part of the city. 

 The same reason must have induced the Macedonian conquerors and 

 Hadrian, where the site was not already chosen, (as in the instance 

 of the Olympium,) to decorate the northern part of the city with 

 those public buildings, which were designed to commemorate their 

 munificence ; and consequently, it is in that quarter that we must look 

 for their remains. The style of sculpture and architecture observable 

 in these buildings, bear witness to the decline and corruption of the 

 arts, and they have occupied perhaps more of the public attention 

 than they deserved, f 



If I am correct in the historical view which I have just taken of the 

 antiquities of Athens, as well as in my opinion of their local dis- 

 position ; my readers will not be inclined to admit a very fanciful, 

 although ingenious application, of the inscriptions on the arch of 

 Hadrian, which has been lately brought forward by J Mr. Wilkins. 

 The arch here spoken of, which stands at the north-western angle 

 of the Peribolus of the Olympium, and appears to have had no 

 connection with any wall of the city, has been generally considered 

 as a monument of adulation, erected by the citizens of Athens to the 



* Thucydides says only, that the Prytaneum was built by Theseus ; but Plutarch tells us 

 that Theseus erected it precisely on the spot where it then stood, otts vuv i8guT«j. 



f I allude here to the Stoa or Portico, as it is called by Stuart. Upon this building I 

 find the following observation in my Journal: — "The uncertainty of antiquarians respecting 

 this ruin is less to be regretted since there is so little to admire in its style of architecture ; 

 the swollen flirtings in the lower half of the shafts of the columns, the sharp-pointed 

 abacuses and the insulated and starting entablatures, producing a very bad effect, and 

 proving it to have been built in the decline of Greek architecture, and not in the best 

 period of the Roman." 



\ Atheniensia, or Remarks on the Topography and Buildings of Athens, p. 45. 



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