582 



ARCHITECTURAL INSCRIPTION. 



The temple to which allusion is made, is mentioned by no particu- 

 lar designation ; it is stated to be situated in the city, the original 

 appellation of the Acropolis, and to be that in which the ancient 

 statue was kept. This object of Athenian veneration is mentioned 

 by Pausanias, amongst the relics preserved in the temple of Minerva- 

 Polias. The statue was carved in wood of the olive, and was pro- 

 bably one of those described by the traveller as still black from the 

 effects of the conflagration with which the Acropolis was visited, 

 amongst the other acts of violence inflicted upon Athens, after the 

 Persians had obtained possession of the citadel. 



A little to the north of the Parthenon stand the ruins of the 

 Erectheum, a double temple of the Ionic order of architecture. The 

 two divisions of the building, although under one continued roof, are 

 distinctly marked, the level of the one being eight feet below that of 

 the other ; the difference in the levels commences at the transverse 

 wall, separating the two cellse. 



Each division had its particular approach, the higher by an hexa- 

 style portico at the east end, and the other by a portico of four 

 columns, attached to the north-west angle of the building. There 

 was also another approach to the lower division by a small staircase 

 from the higher ground within a portico, which is remarkable from 

 the circumstance of having statues instead of columns. The columns 

 of the west were closed by a wall, excepting where three windows 

 afforded light to the pronaos. 



The building has erroneously been termed a triple temple, dedi- 

 cated to Erectheus, Minerva-Polias, and Pandrosus : the portico, 

 where statues are introduced instead of columns, being supposed by 

 modern travellers to be the Pandroseum of Pausanias. This author, 

 however, calls the building a double temple, dedicated to Minerva- 

 Polias and the nymph Pandrosus ; although when he speaks of it 

 collectively, he calls it the Erectheum, from the circumstance of its 

 occupying the site of the ancient temple of Erectheus, whose altar 

 was still preserved in the entrance. 



Pausanias gives no information respecting the origin of the 

 building, and none being furnished by earlier writers, the period of 



